[OLD] Open Setup Ideas and Discussion

[Shadowmod]

I had the idea for something very plain and simple:

R

G

B

-Mafia

1

Red

mafia goon

1

Green

mafia goon

1

Blue

mafia goon

4

Red

townies

4

Green

townies

4

Blue

townies

[Shadowmod]

2x Mafia Goons
1x Reverse Doctor
7x Townies

I like the basic idea very much.
How about making it a science fiction theme/flavour and calling the doc a shield generator or something similar?

As a possible variation you could add more than one of them, but they only offer 1/n chance to block a kill with n people targeting them.

[Shadowmod]

@Ludi: Yes, statisically there is a 4% chance for town to win after just 2 days by lynching correctly twice (as compared to 3:12 mountainious offering 0.3% for a town win after 3 days).
The aim of the setup is to make correct scum lynches more rewarding for town.
Balance is about town 40%:scum 60% win percentage with day 1 fullclaim, random lynches and optimal scum play.
However, D1 claim is not the optimal strategy for town, so the effective (theoretical) balance should be even better.

[Shadowmod]

Two or Three?

1x Mafia Goon
+ 1x Mafia Goon OR 2x Mafia Lovers

7/8x Townies
1x Doctor

~~

Pregame, one player is chosen to be a Mafia Goon. They then either chose to get a Mafia Goon partner or two Mafia Lovers. The additional mafia member(s) are then chosen randomly.

If two Lovers are chosen, the setup is 3:8. If another Goon is chosen, the setup is 2:9.

If there's a doc in there make it 12 players.

[Shadowmod]

I liked the reverse doctor idea much better, please work on that one, Hoopla.

[Shadowmod]

Self-ballancing

Howfar is that setup self-ballancing?
Does town RB + 1-shot vig imply two roles or one person with both actions?
Why would you want to add a town RB in a scenario were town has 3 PRs and scum none, anyway?!
The recruitable survivor mechanic sounds quite interesting, but you PR choices seem rather arbitrary.

Dethy 2.0

This is not mafia (even less than normal Dethy). It's but a logic riddle. Looks like something that I would join as a marathon game, but nothing for the open queue.

[Shadowmod]

Daystart, so 1/8. Guard will most likely die N3 or earlier. And even if they hit the guard town lose a lynch.
But maybe it's just me... I am much more a fan of distributing town power among several minor PRs than relying on one single PR which makes the whole game very dependent on which player gets that one PR.

[Shadowmod]

Nevermind, stupid me, I somehow read over the "1-shot" part...

[Shadowmod]

NightWatch
Wolf Pack (Scum Team): 3 Werewolves - share a factional nightkill - share a factional track - the same werewolf can only either track or kill in each night
Night-Watch (Town-Aligned): 2 Nightwatchmen - Watchers & Masons - cannot target themselves or each other
Town: 7 Vanilla Townies 1 Sleepwalker - visits a random person every night - does not know he is the Sleepwalker - flips as Vanilla on death

[Shadowmod]

Yes, Tragedy that's the way the role works and is supposed to do so. Sleepwalker is basically a miller variant, decoy for all the investigations (of both sides) flying around... I cannot see how that isn't obvious... I think it helps scum slightly more than town, though. But double watcher masons are a force to take on for scum and track is but a double edged sword with this role constellation.

[Shadowmod]

Roll cops are those guys who ROFL all the time, right? ;P

Would a backup also come into play if a killed PR has already used its shot?

How is decided which of the backups takes over first?

[Shadowmod]

Gunmakers and Funtakers

13 Players
Mafia:
1 Mafia Goon
1 Mafia Day Bomb(If shot during day, dies, but also kills whoever shot them.)
1 Mafia Roleblocker

Town:
2 of the following{
33% for Tracker
33% for Watcher
33% for Two Shot Vestmaker[Gives a vest to a player. If that player is shot, it will instead hit the vest. Vests can only be hit once, after that the player will die.
}
2 Gunmakers(Gives a gun to another player each night. The player is told they recieved the gun and may use it during the day to daykill someone.)
6 VTs

Lots and lots of power for town... It's the equivalent of 2 vigs and four bulletproofs... And little killing power on mafia side. I'd say replace the RB with a doc and add an SK or strongman of some kind or something...

[Shadowmod]

[...]
No they do not.

Also, yes UB's come into effect if the shot has been used.

So the PRs can just perform their one shots, possibly confirm quite a good amount of townies in the process and all scum achieves by killing them off (which would require at least four or five nights!) is that unlimited backups come into play... Of course town would go cop and blacksmith claim first, I goess. So the backups becoe investigative and with doctor and JK still alive and saving their shots scum could not even kill those... Seriously, way too much confirmation power for town.

[Shadowmod]

Actually it is rather your responsibility to take care that your setup is not broken before you suggest it, Shotty.

[Shadowmod]

I didn't really check for balance myself, but I estimated that it is, at least somewhat.

x1 Mafia Godfather
x1 Elite Goon
x1 Mafia Goon
x1 Sane Cop
x1 Gunsmith
x1 Miller
x1 Gun Ownner
x6 VTs

Elite Goon is a Godfather for the Gunsmith. Gun Owner is (obviously) a Miller for the Gunsmith. Miller and Gun Owner recieve a VT Role PM, to prevent them from becoming a named townie. Note that Elite Goon

can

kill and that the Gun Owner

can't

.
Day start.

I don't really understand the criticism on this setup. As I understand it each investigator has a 2/3 chance to find scum (cop can find goon and elite goon, gunsmith can find godfather and goon).
Ignorant miller is definitely the way to go if you want to include millers in an open setup, else it's just day 1 miller claim time, bye bye miller, welcome confirmed townie.
If anything this setup is a bit boring because it's essentially just another cops and millers variant...

[...]
1 mafia RB
1 odd day fool
1 even day fool
1 town watcher
1 town cop
however many VTs you think
[...]

Also some of the criticism on this seems rather odd. With odd and even day limitations town defintely has a way to deal with either jester without losing. Maybe make it so odd jester cannot win on D1, though. And/or you replace the cop (boring and lame anyway) by an investigative role that can detect odd/evenness of players in some way (you'd have to develope such a mechanic a bit further obviously).
As a matter of fact many people just won't play a jester game, no matter how well constructed. That does not imply that

no one

would play it or have fun playing it. (I personally would rather not join something like this if it went anywhere into the 10+ player range). If you really want to run something like this, keep it as small and simple as possible and try it as a marathon game. Look how it plays out, refine it and maybe you'll arrive at something for the open queue eventually.

[Shadowmod]

Also I would really appreciate some comments on my suggestions, i.e. something more helpful than essentially "I don't understand your setup and am too lazy to figure it out".

---

R

G

B

-Mafia

1

Red

mafia goon

1

Green

mafia goon

1

Blue

mafia goon

4

Red

townies

4

Green

townies

4

Blue

townies

---

NightWatch
Wolf Pack (Scum Team): 3 Werewolves - share a factional nightkill - share a factional track - the same werewolf can only either track or kill in each night	Night-Watch (Town-Aligned): 2 Nightwatchmen - Watchers & Masons - cannot target themselves or each other	Town: 7 Vanilla Townies 1 Sleepwalker - visits a random person every night - does not know he is the Sleepwalker - flips as Vanilla on death

[Shadowmod]

about RGB: I already said that it's still 60:40 balanced towards scum in case of a day one mass claim (but people seem to collective overestimate all three, the amount of good luck they can actually expect, their own superior scum hunting abilities and the actual chances of town to win in mountaineuos, that's no news), that's hardly borderline broken. Day 1 mass claim is not the best strategy for town though, because it allows scum to chose optimal night kills. Of course strategies involve around good claim timing, PoE and lynching by colour. And the "worst case scenario" for scum is not that bad because it also for the most part nullifies town's ability to get confirmed townies out of a correct lynch, the longer the game drags on the closer actual probabilities come to pure mountaineous actually.
About the "three blues die and you lynch the red scum" scenario - before you call this unfair try to convince any real town in an actual game to take that route. Most players aren't so fond of all in gambles.
The game could be reduced to 12 players or possibly 12 player night start where scum can chose to eliminate one townie by colour pre-game, but statistically that's already really bad for town (about 80% scum win or something, not sure right now) and unneededly mechanically complecated.

about NightWatch: I think you don't get the cop point. What I mean is if you take out the watch and add a cop instead you get rather more power at the price of horrendous swingyness (the outcome of the game heavily depends on whether scum get that lucky early cop kill or cop waggon/claim). And the miller route is already taken with the sleepwalker. One could increase the number of these, of course, but anything above two would be just bad.

Sleepwalker is not a fool (i.e. jester) but a miller variant.
Everything I suggested is neither as rediculously broken nor swingy as a single normal sane cop is.

if you want to stop single lucky incidents from absolutely swinging games into one direction or the other you need to ban all strong roles such as cop or vig as well as half of the currently approved open setups, such as p.e. rusty guillotine, anything with a cop in it etc., where town heavily depends on one single investigative role.
Having two to three PRs in a game this size is absolutely normal. And two masonized watchers is actually pretty hard on scum because it really forces a cat and mouse night game onto them.

Contrary what you might assume I really theoretically checked these setups concerning the relevant parameters of breakability, statistical balance, and variance (i.e. swingyness / luck impact) and they fare much better than a lot of the stuff that is actual approved open game stock right now.

@junpei: How do hider, neighbourizer and doctor actually contribute to a game revolving around odd/even day jesters. Looks like just a bunch of random roles thrown together.

@Empking: Seriously, suggestions like that make me doubt if I should even take anything you say seriously... double kill mafia, 2 vigs four bombs... Great. I have played these kind of (marathon) games. They are just bad and if you want people to actually have

some

fun in them you should be consequent and eliminate the remaining VTs and replace them by redirectors or something, because else they are just random targets for all the jerks with a gun in a game that is decided at the latest in night 2 by something that can best be described as total and utter chaos.

@Hoopla & Junpei: Has any one done the actual

math

on the balance between even and odd day fool (and possibly odd day without D1 fool) yet? This is really not a subject to wild speculation.

[Shadowmod]

By math I mean real and exact numbers, probabilities, chances for each of them to win over all possible outcomes of the game. These can be calculated, it's some work, but not really difficult to do.

Consider this: doc + hider is a weak follow the cop combination. Mafia role blocker is a counter measure to this, but mafia is in a dilemma in this setup and town can just play it safe and vig confirmed scum/jesters. This setup would definitely generate heated setup and strategy discussions on both sides...

[Shadowmod]

@Hoopla & Junpei: Has any one done the actual

math

on the balance between even and odd day fool (and possibly odd day without D1 fool) yet? This is really not a subject to wild speculation.

Why does math need to be done? It seems perfectly logical that the Odd-Day Fool has a much better chance of winning, because it has more opportunities to be lynched.

Because people's "perfectly logical assumptions" about statistics are prone to be a long shot off reality almost all the time.